Not Applicable
Not Applicable
This invention relates to surgery, specifically a medical device to improve the method of cutting, trimming, splitting or dividing biologic tissue.
Cutting, trimming, splitting or dividing smaller than thumbnail size pieces of biologic tissue is difficult when detached. A small piece of tissue may be irregularly shaped and difficult to hold. Biologic soft tissue is malleable. Just holding tissue with a pair of forceps may distort or stretch the shape and affect the accuracy and precision of a cut.
In transplant and reconstructive surgery tissue is removed, altered and replaced. When a tissue is removed it may be cut, trimmed, split or divided before it is attached.
For example, in grafting skin, the skin graft is trimmed to fits its future site. Holding and shaping a small piece of skin is awkward. Forceps holding tissue may obstruct or distort the cutting or trimming.
For very small irregular-shaped tissue, a surgeon may resort to placing the tissue on the tip of a finger and with the other hand cut the small piece with microsurgical scissors.
Holding a small piece of tissue under an operating microscope is awkward. A piece of tissue has be kept in focus and within the narrow microscope viewing area while trying to precisely cut the tissue.
In some corneal transplant surgery, only part of a donor cornea is used. A dome-shaped donor corneal tissue is placed directly on the operating table and an assistant holds down the donor tissue with forceps while the surgeon dissects a uniformly thin sheet of corneal tissue. Because of its dome shape, the donor cornea does wobbles as the surgeon cuts.
Sometimes a donor cornea tissue is split along its edge to remove a thin layer to be grafted. To achieve a layer of uniform thickness, the upper layer is retracted and dissected from the lower layer. The bottom layer is held down against the tabletop with two forceps. As the surgeon dissects and pulls against the forceps the tissue distorts and stretches, an undesirable effect.
In the past, corneal transplantation surgery used whole donor eyeball to harvest part or whole of a cornea. A whole eyeball provided a stable platform to remove the needed corneal tissue. Today, because of modern donor corneal preservation technique, cornea is completely removed from the donor""s eyeball at the time of harvesting. Days later the cornea tissue is transplanted. Without the support of the rest of the eye, donor cornea tissue is difficult to hold.
A method to hold the cornea is to tie the dome-shaped donor tissue around a ball. A donor cornea is stretched and wrapped around a ball with suture. Another method is to pin down the cornea onto a ball with needles. The needles interfere with the cutting. Both procedures are awkward, time-consuming and potentially damaging to the donor tissue. The ball does not provide a stable base for cutting.
Accordingly, several objects and advantages of my invention are:
a. small and/or irregular-shaped piece of biologic tissue is held firmly by the invention eliminating the need for forceps or other fixating instruments
b. attachment of tissue to the device is simple and quick
c. biologic tissue is held firmly by the device
d. the device can be grasped, tilted or rotated for optimum viewing or manipulating of mounted biologic tissue
e. the device provides a solid cutting surface to make accurate and precise cuts
f. the device grasp is strong enough to counter the retraction during lamellar dissection
g. the device originally designed for corneal surgery can be used for any other surgery, human or veterinary, or in situations where small and/or irregular shaped biological material need to be manipulated, cut, trimmed, dissected or split.
The invention is a medical device to hold small and/or irregular-shaped t biologic tissue by gluing tissue with quick-bonding cyanoacrylate glue onto an acrylic mount. Once glued on the mount tissue can be cut, trimmed, split or divided more accurately than holding a small piece manually.